


Corner of the divide

by gooseontheloose



Category: Newsies - All Media Types, Newsies!: the Musical - Fierstein/Menken
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Angst, Depression, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Mental Health Issues, Modern Era, One Shot
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-27
Updated: 2020-08-27
Packaged: 2021-03-06 15:27:57
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,478
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26131144
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/gooseontheloose/pseuds/gooseontheloose
Summary: “You don’t have to be sorry, baby.” Davey steps further into the room, kicking off his shoes (Jack either doesn’t notice that he didn’t take them off at the door, or doesn’t care), “What’s wrong, are you sick?”He sounds sick. His voice raspy from a sore throat or something, sweating from a fever. It makes sense that he wouldn’t want to come and visit if he had the flu.“No. I—” Jack pauses, taking a shuddering breath, “I just can’t get out of bed.”
Relationships: David Jacobs/Jack Kelly
Comments: 4
Kudos: 91





	Corner of the divide

Jack hasn’t got out of bed in nearly three days.   
He knows it’s bad. Very bad in fact.

He has things to do, commissions and projects, and contracts and paperwork and and and and. If he opens his eyes he’ll have to look at it all, look at the mess all around him, and then he’ll want to get up even less. He used to be scared of the dark, and now he can’t even open his eyes.   
There’s even more basic things to do, things like eating and drinking and going to the toilet and washing himself. Even the thought of reaching up for the glass of water on his bedside table makes him dizzy. It’s been there for two and half weeks now, and he’s pretty sure he dipped a paint brush in at some point, but it would stop his throat from feeling so raw.

He just… doesn’t want to.

He’s tired. He wants to go back to sleep. He can’t tell the difference between being asleep and being awake anymore, which is sort of strange, because he usually has these crazy vivid dreams. Artist’s dreams, his friends would say.

And speaking of: his phone’s stopped ringing. It was buzzing a while ago, but now it’s silent, now it’s still. He doesn’t mind. He doesn’t care. He wouldn’t open his eyes, even if it did buzz again. There’s nothing really to open his eyes for. Except that’s not true. He knows it’s not true. He needs to think positive thoughts, he needs to remember that his friends care about him, his family cares about him, he’s not alone, and it’s not his fault.

But maybe if he wasn’t so lazy and wasteful and ungrateful, he’d stop taking advantage of them and the fact that they’re always there and there and caring and there (but where are they now?). Maybe he’d just get out of bed. Just open his eyes.

He battles with himself for a moment, and even that makes him a million times more weary. He’s just going to go to sleep. When you’re tired, you go to sleep. You have to listen to your body. Jack’s body is telling him that he’s weary, that he’s exhausted right down to his bones. That he needs to rest, just for a bit longer.

So Jack listens.

When he wakes up again, it’s like no time has passed at all.

He’s still in the same position, still scrunched up like a piece of paper under the bedsheets, still tangled and matted and dirty. He’s still the same person, still the same shit and shame and self loathing and weight in his bones. There’s still something wrong with him. There’s still everything wrong with him.   
He opens his eyes. It’s dark outside, his curtains are open enough to show a slit of the sky. There aren’t any stars.

And even though he’s tired tired tired, he reaches for the water. Because he’s listening to his body, and his body needs the water more than it needs to rest. It’s very bad that three days of rest have just made him more tired. The water is stale, it tastes like dust. He feels like dust. He’s not quite sitting upright, so it spills all over his sheets, puddling up next to his chest.

Jack starts crying.

Davey would say something like ‘there’s no use crying over spilt milk’.  
And Jack would roll his eyes.   
But Davey isn’t here. Nobody is here, and Jack is alone.

He’s alone and his bedsheets are wet and the water tastes like dust and his head aches, and his body aches, and he’s tired and stale and stagnant, and the dishes need doing, and the whole room smells of paint, and he can’t remember if he paid the electric bill, and his phone isn’t buzzing anymore, and no one cares, and he hates that he’s like this, and he wishes he was someone else, and he wishes he could sleep, and he wishes he could just not wake up again.   
But he just can’t get out of bed.

And that’s bad for some reason, he’s just too tired to figure out why. 

* * *

  
Jack isn’t answering his phone, which isn’t all that unusual for him really. Davey reckons that Jack spends more time with his phone lost than he does knowing where it is. It works for him, the whole ‘rarely having a phone’ thing. He’s better face to face than he is over text, and it adds to his aura of ease and nonchalance. On a slightly different note, it’s an excuse for the fact that he can’t seem to navigate the use of social media. Jack only has three Instagram posts, all uncaptioned and slightly out of focus (despite the fact that he can take photos at an almost professional level), because he always loses his phone, not because he’s basically a grandpa when it comes to technology.

He’s dropped it on the subway tracks before, he’s left it in countless Ubers, he and Race once even threw it in the river in a dramatic rom-com re-enactment about the true meaning of Christmas (which Davey was more than happy to point out was sort of wasted on him).

Davey doesn’t mind the fact that Jack never seems to have a phone, and thus never seems to text him, because he’d much rather be with him in person. He loves when Jack shows up at his apartment unannounced (but never unwelcome). He loves when Jack peppers him with kisses and pulls him into a bruising hug, like they haven’t seen each other in years. He loves when the radio plays softly in the background, and Jack insists, ‘this is our song’, and makes him dance to anything and everything Ed Sheeran. He loves when Jack ‘helps’ with the cooking, and just ends up adding too much paprika, ('Jack that is three tablespoons, get out of my kitchen’), he once added it to rice pudding, and Davey didn’t talk to him for half and hour. He loves when Jack exists in his space, sprawling out on the sofa, kicking his bare feet up on the cushions (because they can agree that only heathens wear their shoes indoors). He loves Jack, even if Jack never answers his damn phone.

And okay, the not answering the phone thing is nothing out of the ordinary, but the fact that when Friday evening rolls around, he hasn’t seen Jack since Tuesday is.

At first, none of them were even all that concerned. It’s different, now that they’re (technically) adults. They all have their own lives, bills and mortgages and full-time jobs. Davey’s job sometimes feels like it’s two jobs stacked on top of each other in an ill-fitting trench-coat. Maybe in college it was different, but now their lives are less entwined, and sometimes they can go full weeks without seeing each other. Even Davey, who’s life is almost fully entwined with Jack’s (and soon will be, when his lease is up and he finally moves into Davey’s place, which actually has working heating), wasn’t concerned at first. Even when he started to get a little bit worried, everyone was quick to point out that things were almost certainly fine. Race pointed out that Jack gets so caught up in his art sometimes that he forgets what day it is. Crutchie said that Jack sometimes just needs his space, with a knowing look in his eyes. And Spot (helpfully) pointed out that if Jack has been murdered, it probably would have been on the news.

But still. It’s been nearly four whole days, twenty texts, and thirty two calls that ran to voicemail since he’s seen Jack, and he’s decidedly concerned. Jack doesn’t do this. Jack’s reliable, and predictable, and dependable. He’s gone more than four days without seeing Jack before (they aren’t as co-dependent as Spot and Race are), but there’s always been a reason, or a text, or a call, or a something more than this radio silence.

He rings Jack one more time before he presses the bell. Jack’s building doesn’t have the fancy speaking through the intercom thing that Davey’s does, and Jack can’t even buzz people in from his apartment, he has to come all the way down the stairs (just some of the many reasons that Davey rarely comes here). He keeps waiting and waiting for Jack to come. It takes a few minutes to finish up the ‘thought’ he’s having as he paints. It takes a few minutes to get out of the shower. It takes a few minutes to pause cooking the meal he might be making. Ten minutes pass, and Jack is nowhere to be found.

The slight prickle of concern becomes full blown panic. What if Jack’s been kidnapped, he’s been missing all this time, and no-one’s reported it yet? What if he’s fallen down in his apartment and broken both legs and no one’s come to help him? What if Spot was wrong, and he has been murdered, it just didn’t show up on the news?

He calls Crutchie, and tries to calm his shaking breathing enough to speak normally. It’s fine. Nothing is wrong yet. It’s like innocent until proven guilty. Everything is fine until it’s proven otherwise. (Davey really hopes that it isn’t proven otherwise.)

Crutchie has a spare set of keys, and he sends Finch over with them, saying that, ‘my car is at the garage, and it would take me until tomorrow trying to get public transport to Jack’s place whilst being in a wheelchair’.

It takes Finch twenty three minutes to get there. He offers to stay, but Davey thanks him, and tells him that it’s alright. He doesn’t know Finch all that well, and strangers still make him a little nervous. He knows logically that if Crutchie likes him and trusts him, that should be good enough, but it’s not.

Davey unlocks the door, and strides up the stairs. He takes them three at a time, like always. Jack’s legs aren’t quite long enough to do that, and it irritates him to no end that Davey can.

He knocks on Jack’s front door three times before he unlocks it. Jack would have no problem with waltzing into Davey’s apartment after a single knock, (sometimes he even takes the door being unlocked as an invitation to enter), but this isn’t the same somehow.

As soon as he walks in, he can tell that something isn’t right.

It’s Jack’s apartment all right, the sink piled high with dishes, a half finished painting still on the easel. The organised chaos that Davey has grown to love. But it’s silent. Everything is still. Jack’s apartment is always brimming with noise. Trashy pop music (‘it’s called pop for a reason Davey, because it’s popular, don’t be a snob’) blasting from a speaker, Jack rambling away to himself in Spanish, a podcast that Davey recommended playing on 2x speed (‘they sound like chipmunks, which is so much more engaging’). But today it’s silent.

Jack’s bedroom door is ajar, and Davey pushes it the whole way open.   
Jack’s room is dark, he doesn’t even have the nightlight on (‘which is for atmosphere, not because I’m scared of the dark’). It smells of sweat and must. The windows don’t open very far in here.

Jack’s there. Or at least, Davey assumes it’s Jack, because who else would be bundled up in Jack’s bed?

“Jackie, are you alright?”

Jack shifts under the covers, just slightly, and then he says, “Dave, s’that you?”  
He sounds horrible. He sounds raspy and raw, but more than that, he almost sounds broken. He sounds defeated. Davey’s never heard Jack sound like that before.

“Yeah, it’s me. I was real worried about you Jackie.”

“I’m sorry.”

“You don’t have to be sorry, baby.” Davey steps further into the room, kicking off his shoes (Jack either doesn’t notice that he didn’t take them off at the door, or doesn’t care), “What’s wrong, are you sick?”  
He sounds sick. His voice raspy from a sore throat or something, sweating from a fever. It makes sense that he wouldn’t want to come and visit if he had the flu.

“No. I—” Jack pauses, taking a shuddering breath, “I just can’t get out of bed.”

And for some reason, that’s when it clicks for Davey.   
He has a tendency to jump to some interesting conclusions at times, doing two plus two and ending up with five, (like when he assumed Jack and Katherine were dating for a month and half in college, when both are in fact homosexuals). But this isn’t some crazy leap of judgment, based on no evidence. The evidence is right in front of him.   
He knew Jack, he knows Jack, so well, and somehow he didn’t notice how badly he was struggling. It feels like a punch in the gut. It feels like he’s failed.

“Why don’t I come and sit with you for a bit?”

“Okay.”

Jack doesn’t move when Davey sits down, shifting further onto the mattress. Even in the dim light, Davey can see how awful Jack looks. His brown skin is tinged with grey, his hair rumpled and greasy. There are dark smudges under his eyes, which are scrunched up with how tightly closed he has them. The sheets are slightly damp, and they smell even more stale than the rest of the room. Davey shuffles into a position where he’s parallel to Jack, pressed against him.

“Are you wearing jeans?”

“Am I?” He sounds so confused, so childlike, that Davey almost breaks in two.   
He wonders how long Jack’s been lying here, all alone.

“What do you need me to do, Jackie? I’ll do whatever you need me to do.”

“I don’t know.”

And Davey doesn’t know either. He doesn’t know how to make it right, he doesn’t know if he can. So he wraps his arm around Jack, holding him as close as he can. Jack curls in on him, burying his head in Davey’s jumper. They lay there for what feels like an eternity. Davey does his best to choke back the tears, does his best not to cry. He has to be strong. He has to be strong for Jack. He’s not an expert by any means, but he’s also not an idiot. He knows what mental health problems can look like. He knows that Jack needs help, needs more help than just his. But for now, he has to be enough.

“Why don’t I make us something to eat?”

“Paprika?” Jack mumbles into his shoulder.

Davey let’s out a watery laugh. “You’re an awfully bad influence, Mr Kelly.” He replies, in a horrible English accent.

“Apologies, Mr Jacobs.”

When he comes back, Jack is sleeping again.   
Davey cries quietly as the rice and beans go cold. 

**Author's Note:**

> Have not proof read this sorry folks  
> Also very oddly personal sorry about that also  
> Anyways! Let me know what you think!
> 
> Couldn't think of a title so it's from a greer song! (incredible band)


End file.
